People are feeling sorry for Jaylen Brown at the moment. Not only did he and his Celtics lose Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday and Luke Kornet this offseason, they’re likely going to be without Jayson Tatum for most of all of the season as he recovers from a torn Achilles. Brown is going to be left to carry the load with Derrick White and new arrival Anfernee Simons, but he’s also getting sympathy because on a recent livestream, he got no love from his teammates.
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Brown called five of his teammates to see if they would answer their phones, and not a single one did. That included bench guys like Jordan Walsh and stars like White and Tatum, but it didn’t matter who it was, nobody picked up. With each voicemail he became more and more exasperated.
Brown has been with the Celtics for his entire nine-year career, and he’s always been painted as a great teammate, so you know this must have been embarrassing for him. What made it even worse is that Jeff Teague tried the same thing on the Club 520 podcast, and not only did he have more success, he got Tatum to answer practically immediately.
Teague tried different teammates from throughout his journeyman career, and though PJ Tucker, Georges Niang and Josh Okogie didn’t answer immediately, Niang did at least text him right back to ask him if was calling because he’d been traded.
Tatum picked up on the first or second ring, making the entire Club 520 crew explode. “Yo, JT picked up!” Teague exclaimed. Multiple commenters on the pod’s YouTube page said that they’d never seen Teague so happy before.
The conversation was short, with Teague telling him they were doing the same thing Brown did and warning Tatum to be careful what he said on air. He also passed along a message from his co-host B Hen (Brandon Hendricks), who wanted Tatum to know that he didn’t like his braids but he still rocks with him.
“He’s lucky I can’t say how I really feel,” Tatum responded, sending the group into another frenzy.
For reference, Teague was Tatum’s teammate for a grand total of 34 regular season games, and one playoff run that ended in a championship. Brown and Tatum have been together since Tatum was drafted in 2017.
This isn’t the best look for Brown, but in his defense, who calls anybody out of the blue in 2025? It’s a texting society now, and his teammates could have been busy with any number of things when he called. If he’s a little more selfish with the ball this coming season, though, we probably know why.
